markm wrote: [quote=" The biggest cost of development has got to be the data: research, CAD, paint etc., and you already have that. It seems from the posts that there is considerable interest in porting some of the MTL N designs to Z.
Mark

Mark,
I don't think the costs of research, CAD, paint, etc come anywhere near the cost of cutting steel for a new car body.

I've heard figures from $50,000 to $80,000 for cutting steel for a new car body style here in the USA. That may or may not be accurate, but with what machinists charge I can see how the price could sky rocket easily.

Loren,
As always I have to defer to people actually doing the work, but since I'm always trolling for a new company to do, I collect business facts.
I am aware of the cost of molds. Years ago, I used to routinely drop $40K for IC package molds. But using the same presses for Z scale, I could produce an AZL production run (about 200 pieces) in just 4 shots and every boxcar ever made in a day's production run. I've also recently learned that molds can be cut for as little as $5K. If the steel is really going for $50-$80K, I think I know where I can pick-up a cheap CNC unit (which even back in the 70's were making machinists obsolete) and I've found another business opportunity.
I do think you are under estimating the development costs. How much time can be spent at the CSRM library researching a paint formula for a railroad or the time to find a
builders blueprint and the cost of getting copies for that info.

Then there is the 3D CAD designer who has to digitize all that info. It was suggested to me that a "mountainous" producer of model railroad put a man-year into the CAD effort for their first Z car. And what does that CAD designer cost? somewhere between $50K - $100K per year.

In my calculations, the R&D costs of a new body style is roughly the same as the manufacturing tooling costs. Given the choice of one brand new car body or two shrunk down from N scale, I'd prefer the later.

It was meant as a joke (thus the smiley faces) I was feeling like a bit of a spy watching a thread about future MTL products. The "stupid" part was meant as self deprecating humor. (I felt a little stupid looking at the MTL thread.)

I'm probably showing my age by using an old line from Laugh In.

No harm was intended. Nor were any animals harmed in writing this post.

Rob(A),
You may be showing your age, but by my calculations, you and Arte Johnson should have both been riding your tricycles about the same time. :-}

Loren,
My numbers may be way off and may have provided a good laugh to the insiders, but the point to make is that unless the N scale designs are in some nonrecoverable, uneditable format, one should be able to shrink them to Z faster than the CNC can cut the steel. And whether it increases the number of new body designs by even just 25% it would be the improvement that it seems most of us want. In SillyCon Valley I used be be able to do shrinks of 1Meg transistor chips at a rate of one a week.

Joe,
Don't know if it's too late and I know this isn't exactly frieght, but how about something like this:

At one time, I think every railroad in the country owned a couple of these for short line runs, or MOW. Even railroads not known for passenger service (such at the Great Western RR, which owned this sole revenue passenger car) had them.